


Sword and Scabbard

by MissMoe



Series: Recto/Verso [4]
Category: Hyakujitsu no Bara | Maiden Rose
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Love, M/M, Near Death, Reconciliation, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-31 00:15:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12120396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMoe/pseuds/MissMoe
Summary: After almost losing Klaus in No Man's Land, Taki finally comes to terms with his feelings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inariya packs all her mangas with symbolism. In Maiden Rose, No Man's Land is an expression of Taki's and Klaus's forbidden, tainted love, a physical and metaphorical place where something amazing and beautiful had occurred, only to fall to devastation and ruin. 
> 
> When Klaus and then Taki return to No Man's Land, they are taking a journey into the past, but there is no righting such horrendous wrongs, is there? Regardless, when Taki goes to Klaus, he's making an honest statement, one that might finally reconcile their differences. It's so heartbreaking. No one does it better than Inariya.

 

Klaus kisses my bare hand, kneels, and says, “Release me into the field, my master. The sound of your voice is everything to me.” With those words he captures me anew, makes my heart his prisoner once more. 

We have been at such terrible odds. When he ‘volunteered’ for the mission in No Man’s Land, he took me by surprise and made it impossible for me to refuse him without losing face in front of all my men. I am so enraged I follow him back to the shed to confront him in private. Once inside, I see that his living quarters—normally tidy—lie in ruins after Hasebe had ordered it searched for who knows what. The state of his shed seems an apt symbol for our trainwreck of a relationship and I wonder what love there is left to salvage among that wreckage. What had begun as a beautiful dream in our room at Luckenwalde has devolved into an unending nightmare. For as long as we’ve been battling the enemy _out there_ , Klaus and I have been fighting each other with even more vicious intent. 

He comes at me again, as if he wants— _needs_ —to finish what he had started before. He strips me of my clothes and demands that I show him everything, that I lay bare the wounds he had carved into my body. He wants to see with his own eyes what he had done to me. I don’t fight back. I can’t. I am so very tired. It’s easier to let him take what he wants than to hold onto my dignity and pride. What dignity? What pride? I have none when he has his hands on me like that. Then he hurls my own hurtful words back at me. 

“I bet you must think my hunger is an unclean thing, too,” Klaus accuses. 

I slap him hard across the face and I’m ready to return fire for fire but the trickle of blood running down his cheek stops me cold. The look on Klaus’s face is one I had never seen him show at Luckenwalde, but I see that expression of pain and regret more and more the longer we are bound as master and knight. Am I the cause of it? Is this what I inspire in him, such abject misery? 

He moves towards me again and I flinch, but he grabs a small booklet instead and draws away. 

“Don’t worry,” he grumbles bitterly, “I won’t lay hands on your body anymore.” 

I don’t know how I should feel. Relieved? Rejected? Abandoned? Ashamed? How many directions will he pull my heart before it is torn to pieces? Love is such a wild thing, so hard to hold in one’s hands without being bitten by its fangs, pricked by its thorns. I cannot control it, just as I cannot control my knight. I can only be carried along with it, with him, even as I futilely swim against the tide of my own helplessness. I sink and flounder, ever the stoic fool, until death comes for Klaus, and then my struggle leaves me and everything is made clear. 

When I see the train car explode in a terrifying ball of fire and twisted metal, all my doubts and fears, all my suffocating vows even, fall away and my purpose becomes singular and pure and undeniable. I will not be thwarted by Eurote or anything else, and my knight will not be wrested from me against my will. Klaus is there, somewhere, annihilated, and I will kill every last man who has done him harm. In that moment, I feel strangely calm, almost dead, and I know what I must do. I call for Onokami, a Ferdinand designed to hunt and destroy other tanks, but my prey isn’t another tank. I’m going to blast that filthy Eurotean train into fucking oblivion. It is easy enough. It is even easier to put my sword through that foreign scumbag’s hand. He had dared to speak of Klaus and mock his death. If not for Date’s bloodied grip on my sword, I would have taken that bastard’s head off. I would have pierced that slut of a duchess through the heart and torn out her eyes. 

And then I see him down by the river’s edge, his body laid out and motionless. I scream his name over and over even as my men shout back at me, insist that I will be made ‘unclean’ if I lay my hands on him. But I touch him anyway, and his face is so very cold, as cold as a corpse. I kiss Klaus, my lips upon his, my breath a desperate prayer spoken into his mouth, once, twice… 

“How can I abandon the man who fought and bled this much for my pride?” I cry. “I don’t care who thinks we’re filthy and evil! Klaus is my one and only knight!” I clutch him to my chest and declare, “I can’t let him die.” I don’t give a shit who sees me weep, who sees me touch him, my beautiful, broken knight. I sob into his face, “I can’t let you die…frozen like this.” So I hold him, my body hunched and shaking over his, and, oh, my love, my knight! He hears me. He comes back home to me.

  

Not long after—much too soon, in fact—Klaus appears on the training ground as if he were in any condition to practice kendo with me. He is being such a stubborn ass, provoking me until I give in. Klaus is so much bigger than me, but he has been shot four times, saved by a small textbook from Luckenwalde in his breast pocket, and is still feverish from his wounds. I don’t know why he had brought the book with him on the mission, but he is alive because of it and I can only think that perhaps my gods, or someone else’s, had protected him. It is only after I knock him to the ground with my wooden practice sword that I realize he has engaged in such foolishness for my sake, to bring me back to sanity. 

“I have my composure now,” I tell him as he kneels on the ground by my feet, panting from the exertion. “Don’t push yourself anymore.” I’m worried that his bullet wounds have opened up again. 

We go back to my rooms after the shock of Katsuragi’s sudden visit. The man was beyond insufferable, insulting Klaus by calling him a dog without pedigree, but it will take much more than that to make my knight cower. I push aside my anger over Katsuragi’s intrusion though. What’s important is Klaus, and I want his injuries seen to by Suguri right away, but before I can pick up the phone, Klaus has me in his arms and pushed against the curtains. I panic reflexively as dark memories flood my mind. 

“I won’t do anything,” he promises. “Please let me stay like this…just a little longer.” 

His arms are so warm. I bury my face against his shoulder and we stand like that, breathing in each other’s scent and it’s so intoxicating, his scent, his warmth, his body wrapping around me, his hands gripping me so tightly. I feel his fingers come around the back of my head, caress up my neck and onto my cheeks and I’m so ready to give myself to him. He tilts my face up and we are so close, sharing the same breath, almost kissing, but then he stops. 

“I’m sorry,” Klaus whispers, his forehead resting against mine. “I promised not to touch you anymore.” 

Klaus turns away from me and I feel as if I’ve died once more, the same way I had died when I saw the train car explode, when I had seen Klaus lying frozen and bleeding on the river bank. To lose him is to die the worst death; I know it now. I don’t want to die like that—without Klaus, without my knight. It all falls away at last, my insolent, obstinate pride, the insurmountable wall I had built to separate me from the only man I will ever need or want. I will tear it down. I reach out and grasp his arm. He wheels around, shocked that I would for once make a move, that I would show him what I feel in my heart and be _honest_ with him. But I owe him that, and so much more, so I don’t look away, I don’t hide my face and all the desire pooling in my eyes. 

“Idiot,” he tells me. “I can’t be held responsible if you’re gonna be like that. I…” 

I don’t let go. In the past I would have, but not now, not after everything he has done for me. I trace my fingers against his bandaged wrist, gently grip his hand and bring it to my chest and place it over my wildly beating heart. “Please don’t go back to being my ‘friend’*,” I pray, and he hears my silent wish. He takes me back into his arms and I want to burst into tears as we clutch at each other—I am so very happy!—but the bandages on his arm come away and I see the numerous needle marks and the dream shatters once again. I tear the bandages away completely and stare openly, my heart racing for another reason altogether. I know what this means but Klaus quickly denies the truth. 

“They’re from the antibiotics and painkillers,” he tells me, feigning nonchalance. 

“That many?” I counter angrily, panic gripping me. 

He shrugs and flexes his arm. “It would be a bother if my shoulder got infected. Ask Suguri if you think I’m lying.” 

How dare he mention Suguri-san, as if Suguri-san would side with him! I’m about to give him a thousand reasons why I think he _is_ lying when there’s a loud knock on my door. I’m being called to an emergency meeting. _Not now!_ I think. _Can’t I have even one fucking moment to fix this mess?_  

Klaus is inexplicably looking out the window and muttering, “So that’s it. Now I see what’s going on.” Then he doubles over wincing in pain. This is bad. My men are shouting outside my door and I’ve just discovered that Klaus is likely an addict, something too common among soldiers. “Didn’t I tell you not to lie to me?” I plead with him. 

He only begs me to trust him, and then, for some crazy reason, he asks me if I’ve ever flown over the ocean at night. Klaus had done it in the past and known the terror of losing his way in total darkness, but what does this have to do with...? 

“Don’t get lost,” he tells me with a gentle smile. “On that day, didn’t we both decide that we’d be together?” He hands me my katana and says, “Being your sword is the only thing I have to be proud of.” 

When I gaze into his face—the face of my golden-eyed wolf-god—my heart finally takes flight and I know I will follow him through the darkest night, I will fly with him to the other side of the sky. Even if I don’t quite grasp the meaning of his words, I cannot doubt his conviction; I will die for him, just as he will die for me. I call out to my men waiting on the other side of the door, ”Give me five minutes! Klaus and I will come as soon as I’m done getting ready!” I turn my back to Klaus to collect my wits. What I’m about to say somehow feels more sacred than the words I had uttered to bind us as master and knight. In my heart, I am ready to forsake everything for this man. “If you vow to be my sword, then you must not break before your scabbard does.” I turn to face him. “No matter what.” 

He kneels before me and kisses the leather strap hanging from the sword hilt. “Yes, my master,” he intones. 

So many times I had thought that I would break first yet, again, Klaus has vowed to be my sword, and so he makes me strong when I am at my weakest. Where do I end and Klaus begins? He has entered me again and again, sword into scabbard—by sheer force of his will, by such furious love it shatters my heart and pride and makes _him_ my master—until we are finally…of one mind, one body, one soul. At last. Sword _and_ scabbard. No beginning. No end. Just us against the world, hand in hand.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * In the manga, the phrase “Please don’t go back to being my ‘friend’” is part of a scene that unfolds on the next pages in which Katsuragi is remembering the things his own knight said to him. Inariya, however, inserts that part of the phrase into the scene in which Klaus embraces Taki once more, along with a flashback of Klaus comforting Taki at Luckenwalde. I take Inariya’s juxtaposition as an overt parallel drawn between Taki/Klaus and Katsuragi and his own knight, so I put those same words into Taki’s head, even though they are actually Katsuragi’s memories.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus survives his mission in No Man's Land and renews his vows to Taki even as he lies to him.

 

I was pretty sure I was dead. Claudia was there with me and she was a little girl again. That was the clue that told me I wasn’t dreaming. In my dreams, my sister is always as she is now: a woman of beauty and compassion. This girl leading me through the dark forest was the Claudia of my childhood, when the two of us would kneel at our grandfather’s bedside and listen with rapt attention to his wondrous stories. It was he who told me and my sister about the scent of the flower, how the scent is bound up in who we are and how only _it_ can lead us back to the ‘promised land,’ our true home. I never understood what my grandfather meant until I actually smelled it, the scent of the flower. Even in death, it fills my nostrils and pulls me towards it, wraps around my body like a pair of loving arms, and I suddenly know that _I_ _must_ _go to it_. “I’ve found it,” I tell Claudia, “my flower, my one and only rose.” I hear a bird singing a plaintive song from far away and then…he’s right here with me. I look up and see him gazing back with tears streaming down his anguished face. 

“Welcome home,” Taki whispers. 

I reach up for him and he nestles his wet face next to mine. “Ah,” I sigh with relief, life pouring back into me, _his_ life filling me up and making me whole again. “There’s your scent.” 

Our moment lasts for all of a second. Suguri holds up the small booklet I had put in my breast pocket—the textbook in which Taki had written _Danke schön_ when we were at Luckenwalde—and mutters that I must have the luck of the devil. The book now bears four bullet holes, ones that match the wounds on my chest over my heart. I had decided to bring the book along with me on the mission to No Man’s Land after yet another shitty confrontation with Taki in my shed when I had barely refrained from ripping him to shreds. I’ve done such unforgiveable things to him and yet he still saves me. Again and again, he saves me. 

I am taken back to that night at Luckenwalde when he had first let me touch him. I had awoken to find him staring back at me, his eyes wet with tears as they are now, and I had clutched him close to me, wanting only to keep sadness and suffering from him. Yet here he is clutching _me_ , his fierce pride a shield against everyone working to tear us down, tear us apart. “Taki,” I say, “Will you let me fight for you again? A storm is coming, isn’t it? A storm that will destroy everything you hold dear? So, let me be your sword to slash through the clouds. Let me protect you and your pride. Then we can fulfill our destiny, the promise we made to each other…and go home to that place you wished for.” 

At that, Taki’s demeanor hardens, like stone, like steel, and his face is wild and beautiful. He grips my hand tightly in his, covers my eyes and says, “Yes, let us fight with everything we’ve got…for the future.” 

The future. _Our_ future.

  

Our future has to wait for my wounds to heal apparently. I am relegated to sitting around on my ass like a useless lump of flesh. Back at the base, Taki has put me under Suguri’s disgruntled care. The man has been more short-tempered than usual, angry and suspicious, and for once I don’t think I’m the sole object of his scorn. When my fellow agent pays me a final visit at the compound before hightailing it back to the West, he warns me to get out while I can—the search for traitors is intensifying—so I know that something is definitely making the brass nervous. 

“You’re not under some obligation to risk your life here,” he tells me. “You’re gonna die like a dog if you stay, you dumb bastard.” 

I just laugh. I can’t help it. I have no intention of saving my own skin. When the time comes, I will die for Taki, as many times as it takes to ensure his safety. My agent does do me one last favor before he leaves, though. He brings me the morphine and amphetamines I’ve been craving so desperately. The dose that Suguri gave me before I went into No Man’s Land had only gotten me as far as that blasted water tower. The dose before that—the one he administered to me after I was whipped to within an inch of my life by that crazy Hasebe—had been sweeter. Sleeping in Taki’s bed with his arms around me was pretty fucking sweet, too. 

But I’ve been bored senseless for hours now listening to Taki pulling a Hasebe and beating the shit out of his men on the kendo training ground. It’s located just over the wall against which I am leaning as I sit on a crate. I can hear the loud clanging of wooden practice swords reverberating through the air for short spurts, the regular thud of a body hitting the pounded dirt, then Taki’s furious voice shouting, “Next!” That guy. 

I dose up. Within seconds the excruciating pain in my right shoulder and arm evaporates into thin air and I’m ready to set my Taki straight. I haven’t even _seen_ him but I know he’s out of his mind by the way he _sounds_. I grab a practice sword and make my way over to where Taki is standing over his latest victim. 

“Next!” he screams again, like a madman. 

“All right, then,” I snicker. “I’ll be your partner.” 

Taki whirls around and his hair is damp with sweat and the look of shock on his face is mixing with the morphine in my veins like a 180 proof cocktail. I’m in heaven. At first, he won’t even fight me. He hides his surprise and displeasure behind some lame excuse about me being injured and needing to rest my body. I tease him about his concern.

“If you’re so worried about my body, why don’t you check it out for yourself?” 

Yeah, now he’s in a pickle and his face falls, so he turns away from me and orders, “Go back. I won’t beat up a wounded man.” 

Meanwhile, Date is standing right beside us after having been viciously knocked down by Taki earlier and I can hear him muttering under his breath with genuine indignation, “I’m wounded, too, aren’t I?” 

This is too good. I bring up a very sore point with Taki, just to egg him on. “Hey, Taki…” I remind him in _German_ about the hazing he had endured on his first day at Luckenwalde, the way he had fought back defensively against the other students. He had been like a feral cat with its claws out, back arched, fur on-end, tail lashing back and forth. He had grabbed a fucking _mop_ and put a roomful of men twice his size on their sorry asses. Then he had come at me and put me on my ass. 

He’s so embarrassed by the way he had behaved back then, he stammers, “Th-That was…” 

“Oh, is that so?” I prod. “Then—” 

“Come at me!” Taki screams. 

Ah! He’s so riled up I could fuck him right then and there. My cock is hard in my trousers and I shout, “Alright! That’s more like it!” 

Our wooden swords clash repeatedly, but I don’t feel a thing. I’m flying so high and my Taki is so exquisite in his passion that I think to myself, “It’s been forever since I’ve felt so good. Just _this_ is enough.” 

The last thing my agent said to me intrudes on my reverie though: “You’re a clever one, right to the very end, _Lycanthrope_.” Lycanthrope. My call name during my days as a fighter pilot for the Western Alliance. But that reminder of sorrow is enough to make me lose what little concentration I have and Taki’s sword lands a blow. I grimace and Taki immediately pulls back. I won’t have it. I won’t have his pity and compassion, not after what I’ve done to him, not after all the times I took and took against his will. 

“What?” I growl. “Don’t hold back. You can still do it, can’t you? Come at me!” But Taki refuses, his eyes clouding over with fear for my safety. “Fine. I’ll come at _you_ then. Taki!” I grip my sword and rush at him. Taki merely closes his eyes and everything slows down, as if I’m moving under water. He swerves at the last second and the next thing I know, I’m on my knees, my face pressed against his left thigh as he steadies me with a hand to my shoulder. 

“That’s enough,” he says. His voice is so gentle. 

“Hey, no fair,” I tell him. He had beaten me at Luckenwalde by catching me unawares and he did the same to me now. But he’s so…kind. 

“You’ve got a fever from your injuries,” he tells me, trying so hard to save face _for_ me. “We can’t keep going like this.” Then he whispers into my ear, “I have my composure now, so don’t push yourself anymore.” 

I kiss the back of his hand. I’m so happy, so happy I could die and have no regrets because I’ve finally given him something that he needs and he knows it! He knows that I would do _anything_ for him. 

Taki wants to send me back to his room for Suguri to attend to me but then…that snake shows up. I recognize him from the photographs Hartmann had showed me. Katsuragi. He’s a government bureaucrat of some sort in Taki’s country, and a member of one of those noble branch houses, but I know he’s a _traitor_ first and foremost. That asshole insults Taki right off the bat, but I don’t even care that he calls me a dog, and one without pedigree, at that. Even Hasebe is having a fit and accusing Katsuragi of being a trespasser. But he’s more than a trespasser. 

“Isn’t your errand here with me?” I ask him. 

“Why would you think that?” he asks, deflecting. 

“Your eyes,” I snarl at him. “I smell my own kind on you.” He’s on to me, but I’m on to him, too, and if I’m going to go down as a spy and scumbag, then I’ll bring that bastard with me straight to hell. I’ve been a dead man for so long, but even a corpse can serve a useful purpose. Even a corpse, laid over a living, breathing man, can be a shield. And even a sword.

 

We go back to Taki’s room. He still wants Suguri to take care of my wounds in the face of a looming shitstorm. Katsuragi. The Duchess. My mortal enemy, Berkut. The fucking _war_. How can Taki even worry about my stupid injuries? He reaches for the phone to call Suguri but I grab him from behind. His body is so small, so heated, and I push him against the wall and into the curtains. My god. I haven’t held him for an eternity it seems and his scent is overwhelming. I press my body into his, rut against him like an animal in heat. I hear Taki tell me, “Let me go!” but I don’t let him go. I whisper instead, “I won’t do anything. Please let me stay like this just a little while longer.” 

And he relents. I feel his body melt into mine, so I grip him harder. “’Shit,” I mutter. He’s so close to me, the space between us bridged at last. I reach for him, tilt his face up, his lips almost brushing against mine, and then I remember: what Hartmann had told me when he had given me my ‘assignment’ at Luckenwalde. 

“If you don’t know how to treat him, how about treating him the way you would a woman?” 

Like a woman? I had never treated Taki like a woman ever since that first time—with tenderness, with care, with _love_. I had gone at him like an animal, like a crazed, unthinking animal beholden to nothing beyond my own voracious _need_. I had wrecked and ruined him. The _shinka_. My maiden rose. Have I crushed you under my feet forever? I wonder. Have I crushed my most precious flower? I pull away, ashamed. 

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I promised not to touch you anymore.” I let him go. I have to. As much as it hurts me, I can’t go on hurting _him_. But then…something unexpected happens. Taki grabs my arm, ghosts his fingers across my wrist. He’s never made a move on me before, but he’s touching me now, entwining our fingers, bringing my hand up to his chest and placing it over his heart. He’s telling me in no uncertain terms: he wants me! He wants me, my master, my prince, my sweet Taki! I take him in my arms again and, for a blissful moment, I am lost in unimaginable joy. Taki! Taki! You’re mine! 

The next thing I know, he’s staring at the needle marks on my arm, his eyes wide and full of fear. I make excuses, so many fucking excuses. What does it matter anyway? I’m not the one in danger! How can he be worried about me at a time like this? Doesn’t he realize what Katsuragi’s visit means for him? His own people are going to throw him under the bus, sacrifice him, turn their backs on him! That son of a bitch is in collusion with Eurote or the Western Alliance or both. Eurote? They’re just _using_ my master for their own ends, and he’s upset about the stupid painkillers I’ve taken? He’s such a fool, such a fool for me. How can I show him what’s important, what’s a fucking waste of time? My Taki is so young, a boy barely a man. I’ve seen so much more than he has, so I ask him, “Hey, Taki. Have you ever flown over the ocean in total darkness? You can’t see a single thing. The starless sky…the moonless night…looking into that jet black darkness, we used to lose track of everything.” 

He’s listening intently to me, hanging onto my words, his eyes glowing, widening with realization. Katsuragi. The duchess. All traitors. 

I hand him his katana. “Don’t get lost,” I warn him. “It’s not like you.” I remind him of the promises we made to each other, of the vows we took, to honor and serve and protect unto death. I swear once more to be his sword and he, my precious scabbard, my master, finally accepts me. We walk out of his room, hand in hand, sword in scabbard, one body, one soul forever.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The symbolism of sword and scabbard is obvious and blatantly sexual and Inariya has never been one to shy away from brutal honesty. All the more reason she nails it each and every time in her work.
> 
> When I first wrote this set of chapters, I wanted to title it "Truth and Reconciliation" but then I opted to go with my original title "Sword and Scabbard." There were two reasons for this. One, it was more in keeping with my other titles for this series, titles that were plain and expository in nature. Two, Klaus isn't being honest with Taki, even though he IS honest in many other ways, so I couldn't really justify using the word "truth" in the title.
> 
> I wanted to acknowledge the whole "Truth and Reconciliation" thing, though, because it is that phrase that finally enabled me to write this set of POVs. I had struggled for quite some time and failed to find the right angle. Then, I happened to remember the title of one of the campaign levels in Halo: Combat Evolved (titled, not surprisingly, "Truth and Reconciliation") and everything flowed easily. Thank you Bungie boys!


End file.
